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Why 
America First"? 

TAe Basis of Our Patriotism 



Francis X. Reilly, S. J. 



CREIGHTON UNIVERSITY 
OMAHA 






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WHY "AMERICA FIRSir 



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can find no more fitting expression of sentiment to 
sound the note of this occasion than the words of our 
chief executive: 

''America now speaks with the great vohime of the 
heart 's accord, and the great heart of America has be- 
hind it the supreme moral force of righteousness and 
hope and the liberty of mankind", One in faith, one 
in patriotism, one in fellowship, inspired by the ideal- 
ism of our Republic and convinced that the issue of the ordeal 
through which we are passing rests upon our prevision and 
singleness of purpose, we may well pledge ourselves anew to 
bring the war to a close in victorious peace, even if it exhaust 
our vast resources and take all the valiant lives in the United 
States of America. It has been brought home to us, aye, branded 
on our very souls by enemy conquest and kultur, as seen in 
enemy war practices, that, if the deliberate and calculated bar- 
barism of those leagued against us, should gain the ascendant 
and triumph over the civilized world, the priceless heritage of 
free government would be swept from the earth, and the future 
of the race would be the darkest epoch of its history. 

The records of the past go to show that military despotisms 
have ever been the supreme evil of human society; when, how- 
ever, jingoism joins forces with material progress and barbaric 
ruthlessness, it becomes all the more dangerous, and all the more 
hateful. With all the gravity and calm dignity which a con- 
scientious executive has at his command, we are told that for us 
the day of final test has come ; but we are assured that we will 
win, that the issue is worth the brave lives and all the treasure 



Why "America FirstT' 



the war will cost. As the preserver of peace and the guardian of 
civilization, we as a nation are summoned by the God of battle 
and the God of nations to do our full share in the emancipation of 
man. The summons is to the heroic in us. It is our task under 
God, and we, the eldest born of freemn, assume it willingly, 
courageously in the cause of right and justice. 

This is no time to fire the imagination. It is imperative for 
us to follow in calm reason the way of truth, justice and right 
with fidelity and courage. The war has put upon us grave re- 
sponsibilities, neither anticipated nor foreseen. There are ob- 
ligations to be met ; there are questions that demand an answer. 
In honor and in conscience, we are bound to keep the covenants 
we have made. The lofty moral purpose that fires the spirit of 
America today, resting upon the broad principles of represent- 
ative free government, will keep alert and true the best char- 
acteristics of our people. If duty determines destiny, and our 
duty is as clear as it is imperative, ours is a high and noble 
destiny. It is not for us to foretell the outcome ; that is beyond 
our vision; but as we can see how the hand of Providence guided 
us through the crises of the last hundred years and more by 
reason of our fidelity to His law, so in this our day will He make 
issue for us, if we but hearken to the voice of authority, which 
rules by His will and which under His guidance A\dll bring us to 
the goal of our hopes — peace with victory. 

Too much insistence cannot be laid upon the fact that the 
result of the present crisis depends largely upon individual 
public spirit. It is your affair and my affair and a very serious 
problem. In the stress of activities for the successful conduct 
of the war, there is danger of our losing sight of the fact that 
our government is founded on the idea of equal individual man- 
hood and equal individual responsibility. In the minds of our 
fathers the individual was the one element to be taken care of ; 
*'the sole business of government was to give him the rights of 
civic manhood, to protect him in his personal freedom and 
otherwise to leave him alone". This policy seems to have 
worked well in those days, due to the quality of manliood, and 



The Basis of Our Palriotism 



to the sense each had of his innate dignity and of his personal 
responsibility to the state. There were no forces forever guid- 
ing, supporting, directing, providing for him, telling him what he 
might or might not, ought or ought not do. He was neither a 
moral nor an intellectual cripple. To the idea of the manhood of 
man, of a government formed to protect him in his rights, leaving 
him free in his actions and his mode of thought, we owe it that 
we are the nation we are. 

If there has been a departure from this principle on the 
part of the government, is it because the citizen has lost his 
sense of individual dignity, lost his grasp on his relations and 
responsibility to the government f Can it be that the original 
American idea has been modified with time by influences that are 
alien, nay, hostile to the fundamental principles of American 
institutions? This is our government, our country, and when 
there is a question of preference, when it is America or some 
other countrj^, it is and must be America first. We are the last 
to call in question the hearty love and veneration that another 
may have for his native land. We know that it is natural and 
entitled to respect. Moreover, we have always respected it. 
We have a right to expect, however, nay, we demand that native 
sons, as also men who have sworn allegiance to the United States, 
never forget for a moment that this Republic, on questions in- 
volving peace and war, commands absolute subordination of 
any and all political interests to the interests of the United 
States. 

Much is left to the individual, to his sense of duty, to his 
patriotism ; for the one thing to be said of our system is that it 
is free. "It is the production of men of practical business, of 
experience, of wisdom, and is suited to what man is, and to what 
it is in the power of good laws to make him". Its power is 
the power of the nation; its will, the will of the people. Such 
as it is, it is the result of our deliberate study and choice. It 
was not revealed to us, nor dictated to us, nor taught to us by 
doctrin^aries, nor foisted upon us at the point of the bayonet. 
Framed by our fathers for themselves and their children, it 

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Wh\) "America FirstT' 



was purchased by American valor; not "a transient glimmer- 
ing ray shot from the impulse of passing resentment", but a 
valor that for seven long years braved every hardship and fought 
an unequal fight against the might of imperial England. That 
noble struggle, the inspiration of later times, was even less re- 
markable than the battles which won for us in deliberative 
assembly the constitution of the United States, a constitution 
whose characteristic quality is its recognition of the individual, 
and the part he plays in successful government. We live, thanks 
to them, ^' under the only government framed by the unrestrained 
and deliberate consultations of the people", the first of its kind 
in the history of the w^orld. It is your government and my gov- 
ernment. Upon us depends its stability. Upon our moral worth, 
our attachment, our fidelity in every detail, rests its honor, 
its greatness, its future. Ours is a duty of justice and gratitude. 
*'Our country fosters our dearest interests and protects our 
hearths and altars. We share in her development and pros- 
perity; we thrive under her guarantee of safety to life and prop- 
erty". Ours is her heritage of wisdom; ours is the resplendent 
glory of her name written in letters of gold across the fairest 
pages of the world's history. Justice and gratitude tell us in 
no uncertain terms what return we must make for what she 
has done for us. Justice demands the last full measure of devo- 
tion; gratitude, the best we can offer. 

Apart from gratitude, apart from the idea of justice, duty 
to such a country as ours we base upon a deeper principle. AVe 
believe that when she calls upon us, it is by right divine ; for she 
has received the authority needful for her life, her work, her 
mission. With us, next to God is country; next to religion is 
patriotism; God and country is our watchword. The love of 
country, because it is God's law, goes hand in hand with our 
religion. In view of the work allotted to us by Him, who rules 
the destinies of nations, we realize that His purpose must be 
our purpose, and that only through loyalty to those who under 
Him guide the Ship of State, will His purpose for the future 
generations of freemen be accomplished. 



The Basis of Our Patriotism 



As educated, patriotic citizens, we know our duty ; we know 
the attitude of the Church towards the Republic today, as 
always. She has taught us to ^ive our unqualified, whole-heart- 
ed support and loyalty to the United States, to cherish an en- 
lightened, generous patriotism, to labor to consecrate this vast 
land of teeming millions to the honor of God for the welfare of 
man, that the song of the freemen, blending with the hymns that 
ascend like incense from the sanctuary, may rise in one paean 
of majestic melody, a song of praise and thanksgiving worthy 
of the God of nations, worthy of the freeborn people of United 
America. 

In love of country, in loyalty to its life and well being 
we cannot be outdone. Our love is strong ; our love is enduring ; 
our loyalty so disinterested that we shrink from no labor, we 
stop at no sacrifice. We venerate the spirit of our people 
and our institutions; we cherish the spirit of freedom, the 
spirit of '76 and '61, because it is the very life of our national 
existence anrl honor, the cause of our development, the bulwark 
of our safety. Today we live by that spirit, the spirit of in- 
tense single-hearted loyalty. Today that spirit is ours in all 
its significance, in all its heroic nobility, for ours are minds 
that appreciate, ours are hearts that are generous. 

In this supreme hour, the country we love, she who is set 
as the hope of nations in travail, is calling upon the devotion 
of her myraid sons and daughters, asking them for the active, 
intense, unwearied patriotism that shows itself in deeds, in 
sacrifice; a patriotism that grasps the situation as she sees it, 
and is willing to put the welfare of the nation above every 
personal consideration, to throw down the gauntlet to death 
itself that the nation may live. We who take a legitimate pride 
in our citizenship, wdio deem it the greatest honor and the high- 
est dignity possible to man as man, we have but one answer: 
''To the very end". Our country as the land of human dignity, 
of human liberty, where government may be likened to the Provi- 
dence of the Most High, whose minister she is, — our country is 
the crowning glory of our race, the embodiment of the spirit of 

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Wh]) "America FirsiT' 



human liberty in its struggle for the aggrandizement of man. 
Heie alone is manhood the sole condition of the gift of civil 
liberty; here alone is found the recognition of men's greatness 
and dignity; here, at last is realized the haunting dreams of 
the race for six thousand years — Liberty, Equality, Fraternity. 

Liberty, our pride and boast, is impossible without order, 
and order demands government. Without conviction of its 
legitimacy and the obligation of obedience to its mandates gov- 
ernment is futile. Civil authority is but a natural means to a 
natural end. It is by no convention, no compact or contract 
that authority says to a man * * do this or do not do that ". " The 
point fixed by nature and by God is that there must be authority 
existent under some form, and under that form obeyed. Civil 
authority is the moral power to command. It is from God, not 
be revelation or divine institution, but by the fact that God is 
the author of nature. Nature requires that civil authority be 
set up and obeyed; what nature absolutely requires or forbids, 
God, the author of nature, must command or forbid, since nature 
is the expression of His will". Obedience, then, is a moral duty, 
not a physical necessity. The right to govern and the duty to 
obey are correlative; one cannot exist without the other. 

''The nation as a moral unit, that is, as distinguished from 
the citizens taken distributively, is sovereign; but the people 
taken distributively owe allegiance to and are bound to obey 
the enactments of the government, since it governs by divine 
right. This fact confirms the people's rights by the highest 
sanctions, and at the same time commands them to obey the 
laws for conscience sake. The whole people is sovereign; the 
government legitimate and sacred; the nation, as a moral unit, 
makes the laws; the people, as individuals, are held to obey 
them". 

Human government rules by the authority of God, not 
by its o^vn. Its right to rule is God's right. It receives its 
power as a trust. The citizen therefore is bound to obey in as 
far as God authorizes it. This asserts a solid basis for liberty 
and provides for the stability of Government and the good order 



The Basis of Our Patriotism 



of society. As we are bound to obey God, we are bound to obey 
the state as the minister oi Clod. The law binds in conscience 
because legitimate government exists by divine appointment and 
has the right to make laws. For the reason that we are bound 
in conscience to obey God, we are bound in conscience to obey 
the Law. "By Me kings reign and lawgivers decree just 
things". ''Let every soul be subject to higher powers, for 
there is no power but from God, and those that are, are ordained 
of God. Therefore, he that resisteth the power, resisteth the 
ordinance of God". When, then, the country declares war, the 
war is the law of the land, and binds the subjects to the same 
extent and for the same reason as any other law. It is a ques- 
tion of the obligation of the citizen to obey the law. So far as 
he is bound to obey the law, he is bound on his allegiance to 
render the service or the aid which the government commands, 
and to render it in the form which it specifies. There is no 
option. ' ' The generative and conservative principle of political 
institutions is divine Providence". 

"Constitutions are sacred so far as they are written in the 
hearts, habits, manners, customs of a people ; they are the living 
soul of the nation, that by virtue of which it is a nation, able to 
live a national life and perform national functions. Govern- 
ments fall not for want of physical force, but because of the 
lack of moral support on the part of the citizens". Loyalty is 
of first importance to the life of a democracy, loyalty built on 
a sense of sacred duty. True, affection and interest play their 
part ; but affection when not founded on principle and sustained 
by a sense of duty is a wayward, fickle thing. As to interest, 
it, too, is variable, for men mistake their true interests. ' * Views 
change as to where interest lies, and interests veer with age, 
pursuits and social conditions". As treason is a crime, so 
loyalty is the highest, noblest, most generous of human virtues. 
"It is the human element in that sublime altmism which the 
apostle tells us is the fulfillment of the law." It has in it the 
principle of devotion and self-sacrifice that make man most 
Christlike. Where this spirit is rife, where it animates a na- 

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Wh^) "America FirstT' 



tion, there is nothing great, generous or heroic of which a loyal 
people is not capable. 

The sentiment that binds a man to the land of his birth 
is as universal as it is natural; as unreasoned as it is impossible 
of analysis. In varying degrees, in every age, apart from any 
conscious design to foster or develope it, attachment to and 
love of country exists everywhere. It is the thread of the story 
that winds its way through the records of tribes and peoples and 
races ; it is the inspiration of the bards, the theme of the death- 
less song of national poetry. Patriotism is not the glow of soul 
that rises from the contemplation of signal natural advant- 
ages, — the beauty, fertility, power, prosperity of the country, 
the sources of enjoyment or the means of advancement it affords. 
Be it what it may, bleak or balmy, north or south, sterile or 
fraitful, the tendency to cling to it, to glorify or idealize one's 
native land is as common as it is creditable to those who love it. 
Like other human ties it is modified by influences like character, 
culture, religion and the political institutions to which it owes 
allegiance. In remote times and at low stages of civilization, 
while it may evince intensity of devotion, individual loyalty or 
loyalty to an individual, it lies too close to the instinct of self- 
preservation and to blind partisanship to take rank as the virtue 
of patriotism. Loyalty to country, however, is the essence of 
patriotism ; even in its lowest stages, it is a noble thing in itself, 
and w^orthy of men. 

** Patriotism as an enlightened principle springs from the 
soil of a broad culture and from the civilization which real 
culture induces". Culture implies high moral principles and 
lofty social aims. These constitute a country's greatness; by 
these alone it flourishes. Material wealth, arts, literature, 
science, valuable and effective in their way and in their proper 
sphere, are not the index to a nation's standing. With them 
a country may be on the decline; fair to the eye, but with the 
principle of dissolution active in its vitals. '*A country is 
gauged by the depth of its wisdom; by the hold that religion, 
virtue, freedom, the pillars of civilized society, have upon its 

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The Basis of Our Pairiolism 



people". Where these are, we find true patriotism, namely 
the embodiment in her sons of the enlightened principles of 
devotion and service based upon a sense of moral right and 
duty. 

The test of a country's worth is the quality of the men it 
produces. Where devotion to country is grounded upon moral 
conviction and love of God-given freedom, we find the patriot, 
men who live in the affection of their fellows because of their 
exalted moral worth. Consecrated to a mighty work '^they 
were men of conviction, of tempered zeal, of energetic person- 
ality, of exalted principle"; they met the test, proved their 
worth and enriched the country and the age that summoned 
them to its service. Their title to respect, to veneration, is 
their intrinsic excellence, for their names are synonymous with 
noble deeds, and manly virtues. 

The mere mention of such men as our beloved Washington 
and the great-hearted Lincoln lifts us above the dead level of 
common existence, stirs our better selves within us, until we re- 
solve that these men shall not have lived for us in vain. The 
lives of patriots are of more value to the civic welfare of the 
nation that produced them, than all the material wealth and 
prospects it can boast. Time has flung a shadow over all save 
their splendid lives, and sent into oblivion their little world 
of men and events; yet in heightening their noble isolation, 
time has bequeathed to us a deathless inheritance. We are apt to 
grow unmindful of the harrowing circumstances of the times in 
which their lot was cast, the dark days and foreboding when 
their hearts grew faint and all but failed ; yet, human even as we, 
they had to suffer and be strong. Their deep-rooted faith kept 
their vision clear and their determination fixed; and in the 
darkest hour the God of destiny favored them with a pillar of 
cloud by day and pillar of fire by night. 

Through the heartening influence of the lives of the patriots 
of old, we are ready to act and to suffer if need be for the cause 
of civilization and humanity. We can leave all to battle for the 
right, for principles that live close to the heart of freemen ; we 



Wh]) "America FirstT' 



can make light of life, if the alternative be the threatened loss 
of liberty. The loyalty we owe our country, is the loyalty we 
owe to honor and to God. **With enlightened and unreserved 
devotion, with the full consent of our higher nature, from the 
honest promptings of noble sentiment", we pay the greatest 
tribute a man can offer — ''All and to the end". ''To defend 
by force of arms the honor, the independence, the existence of 
our country, is a fundamental, a sacred duty; but it must be 
dominated by the spirit of justice and philanthropy" and be 
consistent with our relations to our enemies as to our allies. 
Times that try men's souls come but once in a lifetime. It is 
then especially that the citizen is bound to meet his obligations 
to the country that shelters him and pay them in full either 
with his property or with his blood. When the dark days come and 
danger threatens, as it does today, the patriot is at his post, 
one with his government in thought, word, deed, ready to act 
his part in the capacity that his country requires. 

We may reckon our duty to our country in her hour of trial 
by the unnumbered blessings which God through her has be- 
stowed upon the least of us. From him to whom much has been 
given much shall be required. According to the number and the 
splendor of the gifts which nature and our forebears have be- 
queathed to us, shall we be judged by the generations to come. 
They shall know that we were set as a beacon of hope and 
bright promise to all the nations of the world, and their verdict 
will be just because based on the findings of unerring time. 
Never has a nation been so favored as we have. Range round 
the whole world, north temperate or south temperate zone and 
show me 3,000,000 square miles that are in any way comparable. 
See this vast country set in the fairest portion of the new world, 
amidst mighty waters that temper all the winds that blow, with 
mineral wealth untold and lands that might feed the world! 
Here are the wonders of nature, here vast inland lakes, and a 
network of majestic rivers that bear her argosies to the en- 
circling seas. Here, a puissant race, a nation 100,000,000 strong 
dedicated to liberty; here the sacred guarantee of life, liberty 

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The Basis of Our Patriotism 



and the pursuit of happiness with the means thereto, education 
and equal suffrage. 

Set in the wilderness, on a bleak and storm-swept coast 
three hundred years ago, in 150 years we grew to such stature 
that we measured our might with the might of the mother count- 
try— and we prevailed. A hundred years ago, we were an ex- 
periment, a handful of colonies stretched along the Atlantic; 
today we occupy the place of honor among the nations of the 
world, the arbiter of the fate of humanity and civilization ; we are 
the source of the world's supplies, for we rival in every species 
of wealth, the combined resources of the rest of the world. 
Please God, we will be worthy of our privileges. Upon us 
rests the responsibility of living up to the principles through 
which and by which our prosperity has accrued to us as a na- 
tion and upon which our future and the future of the world 
depends. Ours is a high and noble destiny. We are to make 
love of country one with sincere love of fellow-man and his 
real interests, giving to the world a concrete compelling argu- 
ment that we recognize the brotherhood of man as we admit 
the fatherhood of God. 

Here, beneath the flag, the symbol of all for which we as 
freemen stand, the embodiment of all we love; here under the 
egis of freedom's banner, wherein the red of American heroism 
blending with the white of unflinching faith and loyalty waves 
midst the unclouded blue of hope and peace in starlit glory; 
here, America, we pay thee our tribute of love and loyalty. 
With hearts that are pledged to thee, we do thee homage. Thy 
fair name is our pride and boast; thy matchless glory our in- 
spiration. In thy keeping is our hope, the future of the human 
race. For thy mission is to show the world, to convince them 
that dwell in the outer darkness, that man, even as we, is fit for 
the highest civil and political freedom. Through thee, thy ex- 
ample and thy aid shall the light of liberty be shed across this 
night 0^ darkness, and the cause of mankind as man, triumph 
over all the world, because we, thy sons, have taken up this 

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JVhp ''America FirstT' 



work, have put our hands to the plow, not to rest, not to look 
back, '^till the very end"! 

America : 

'* Humanity with all its fears 
With all the hopes of future years 
Is hanging breathless on thy fate. 

• ••••• 

Our hearts, our hopes are all with thee, 
Our hearts, our hopes, our prayers, our tears, 
Our faith triumphant o'er our fears, 
Are all with thee, are all with thee!" 



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